Immigration in Iowa: Countering Dominant Narratives by Lily Hamilton*
*Lily Hamilton is an intern at Benach Collopy where she works on asylum issues, LGBT immigration issues, and the fine art of satisfying the Immigration Court Practice Manual.
I stumbled across an article awhile back on the New York Times site that sparked my interest. As a native Iowan, naturally any article from the Times mentioning my home state would give me pause. 
Angela and Omar Totti Ramirez are our clients of the month for April 2017. Omar, a Bolivian citizen, recently received his residence based upon his marriage to Angela, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Bolivia.
We thought we had seen it all before we handled this case. It started off as a simple marriage-based application for residence, the type we have done thousands of times. Angela had been married before. 
The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has created turmoil in Washington DC and on the Presidential campaign trail. Republicans are uniformly calling on the President to refrain from nominating anyone to fill the vacancy due to the upcoming Presidential election. Within hours of the news of the Justice’s death, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader and the man who controls the Senate’s agenda, stated that the “vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.” 
Yesterday, in a 7-2 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an immigrant who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor paraphernalia charge for concealing pills in his sock cannot be deported for the offense. Simply stated, Moones Mellouli faced the possibility of deportation for possession of a sock.
Mellouli, who came to the U.S. on a student visa from Tunisia in 2004, graduated with honors from U.S. 
Great news right out of our own backyard. Montgomery County, Maryland, the county that surrounds most of Northwest Washington DC and the most populous county in Maryland, announced today that its jails would no longer honor detainers issued by Immigration & Customs Enforcement except under very specific circumstances. This decision places a vice grip on one of the region’s most reliable ICE enforcement pipelines and is further evidence that local municipalities are rejecting the damage done to communities by the heavy-handed enforcement activities of the current administration. 
This blog post was written by FOBR Michelle Mendez, Senior Managing Attorney at Immigrant Legal Service of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington.
On April 8, 2014, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley signed into law Chapter 96, which, through a small, technical fix that closes a gap between state and federal law, expands the jurisdiction of an equity court to include custody or guardianship of an immigrant child pursuant to a motion for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) factual findings. 
In a move that will help thousands of immigrants, California governor Jerry Brown signed SB 1310 into law today. This law imposes a maximum sentence of 364 days in prison for those convicted of misdemeanors in California. The law is set to take effect on January 1, 2015. Under current California law, a person convicted of a misdemeanor may be sentenced up to one year, or 365 days, in prison. 
Today, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc. that the state of Arizona cannot separately require an individual to prove he is a citizen in order to register to vote beyond the regulations set forth by the federal government. This decision stated that Arizona’s additional “proof of citizenship” form was contrary to the National Voter Registration Act, the federal law establishing a specific form for Voter Registration. 
Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) was named the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security, a committee that will presumably have a lead role in developing any new immigration law in the coming Congress. Incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) announced today that Rep Gowdy would be chair in the new Congress and stated “Rep. Gowdy will play a leading role on immigration reform which is a top priority of the House Judiciary Committee in the new Congress.” 
